This invention relates to an information receiving/display apparatus and an information receiving/display method, especially those based on a novel operation principle.
Modern information transmission started with remote transmission of audio information together with appearance of radio receivers as information receiving equipment. That is, radio receivers are means for transmitting audio information (sound) to people at remote locations and invoke their auditory sense to give them information. Subsequent to radios, television sets were invented as information receiving equipment. Television systems are means for transmit visual information (images) and auditory information (sounds) as electric waves to people at remote locations and invoke their visual sense and auditory sense to give them information.
Humans have five senses, namely, visual sense, auditory sense, olfactory sense, gustatory sense and tactile sense. However, modern information transmission has dealt with visual information and auditory information only, and transmission of the remainder olfactory information, gustatory information and tactile information has not yet been realized.
Even if it is tried to implement current television sets with the function of receiving and displaying at least one of olfactory information, gustatory information and tactile information, gustatory sense and tactile sense are proximately discernible senses humans can perceive something when directly touching it (distance 0), and incompatible with TV. Therefore, such implementation is impossible. Also regarding olfactory information, since chemical properties cannot be decomposed and recomposed, unlike three primary colors (RGB) of visual information, it is basically difficult to implement TV sets with the function of receiving and displaying olfactory information. Moreover, since olfactory receptors are considered to amount as many as the order of N=106, basic chemical cells as many as N or N1/2  have to be prepared for reproduction of olfactory information, and this is extremely difficult in the present situation. Also from this point of view, reception and display of olfactory information are difficult.
Difficulty in implementing TV sets with the function of receiving and displaying sensory information lies in not having a display with a flexible plane. That is, when people touch screens of CRT displays, which are currently the most widely distributed displays, they merely discern cold and hard texture of glass. Although there is a recent development of a system enabling a user to trace the screen with a finger, the user can perceive only a rough stereognostic contour therefrom, and there are not techniques that provide remote reproduction of delicate tactile texture of surfaces. Additionally, it is basically impossible to touch images displayed on CRT display screens from their backs. Although liquid crystal displays (LCD) and plasma display panels (PDP) have recently come to be introduced in lieu of CRT displays, the above-reviewed conditions have not been changed yet with them.
As reviewed above, although humans fortunately have five senses, namely, three remotely discernible senses (visible sense, auditory sense, olfactory sense) and two proximately discernible senses (tactile sense, gustatory sense), what can be actually transmitted has been limited to audio-visual information. Although there is a trial to synthesize voices from movements of faces, this is not but mere introduction of auditory information from visual information, and does not break through the category of audio-visual techniques.
In the era of progressively high-leveled networks, those information communication techniques, which are rather lopsided, involve the possibility of rendering humans quasi-malnourished and inviting hazards from the standpoints of maintaining or developing salutary sensory functions, and further from the standpoint of brain evolution.